Fair winds, Rex: a guard of honor along the catapult, and the Old Man’s saber sends him home

2026-08-01FEATURE GRAPHICS

Fair winds, Rex: a guard of honor along the catapult, and the Old Man’s saber sends him home 5b79e2f

CDR Ray “Rex” Barlow’s Hornet rolls down cat one for the last time — twelve squadron pilots at the salute along the track, the Enterprise’s commander astern with his saber coming down

Twenty-six years. Nine deployments aboard the USS Enterprise — the Med, the Gulf, the Indian Ocean, the Western Pacific. Four thousand nine hundred hours in the Hornet and 1,140 arrested landings, better than three hundred of them at night. Commander Ray “Rex” Barlow was shot at over four oceans and, on one black night over Iraq in ’91, shot back: when a SAM found his wingman’s jet on the way in to the target, Barlow rolled back into the envelope, put the site down hard, then escorted the crippled Hornet two hundred miles home and talked him aboard the boat to a one-engine trap. For that night he wears the Navy Cross. He never once brought it up. The citation did all the talking.

This morning the Enterprise gave it back to him. Borrowing a long-standing tradition from the French Navy’s Charles de Gaulle, twelve of his squadronmates formed a guard of honor along cat one in flight suits and helmets, and as Rex’s Hornet went into tension the ship’s CO stepped out beside the track and raised a saber. The burner lit. The saber fell. The guard snapped to a salute, and thirty-four thousand pounds of Hornet went down the stroke and off the bow — last catapult, last climb-out, the whole deck watching. Fair winds and following seas, Commander. The pattern is yours.

The full ceremony lives in the sim now as a standalone scene:

Watch it here: /?scene=final-launch&auto=demo — eighteen seconds, three camera beats: a wide establishing shot of the Enterprise pushing through the swell, a dolly down the flight deck past the saluting guard, then a chase cam orbiting right through the stroke before settling ahead of the jet to catch the climb with the carrier square behind.
On film: the same flight, cut for the YouTube channel with the anthem on the bed.
Under the hood: new pilot figures in flight suits, helmets and visors with a keyed salute; a saber-armed commander whose raised blade is the launch signal; steam curling off the catapult track while the jet holds in tension; the regular deck crew holding their stations, wands high, to wave the old man off.

Some scenes we build for the sim. This one we built for Rex.